And yet there are no triumphal arches being erected in Washington. If this were one of Carlyle’s heroic ages, President Bush would address a joint session of Congress with a box at his side, and he’d pull out a severed head, declaring: “Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present Saddam Hussein!”

But nothing of the sort is going on now. The mood in the White House is calm and corporate. President Bill Clinton banged bongos and lit cigars on the days of his minor triumphs. That’s not the Bush way. Throughout this war White House aides have been subtly disappointed that there hasn’t been more electricity in the air around the Oval Office. They grew up watching those movies about the White House at war, and expected high drama. Instead they got methodical problem solving.

Yesterday, discussion at the senior staff meetings concerned the remaining pockets of Baath resistance. There was talk about humanitarian aid and how to manage the transition to the interim administration.

One of the things we have to keep reminding ourselves is that most of what one reads about the Bush Administration is fantasy. Bush-hating journalists have no access to what really goes on in the White House, and have given up all pretence of being fair. So one reads about the warmongers in the White House and the Pentagon eagerly looking around for the next invasion. Should the tanks turn left and go to Syria, or right and into Tehran?

This is fiction.

One reads about Bush the religious fanatic who feels he was chosen by God to prosecute the war. One reads about the cabal of neo-conservatives controlling the brains of Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice. One reads about secret Pentagon efforts to install Ahmed Chalabi as a US puppet in Baghdad.

This is all fiction.

When you actually hear people in the White House talk, their concerns are always more prosaic. They talk about the dull but important issues of legal reform, seed distribution, civic administration. There is an absurd media debate over whether the US or the UN should run Iraq. But run what? With the Baath party destroyed there is no neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood administration. That’s what the Bushies are thinking about, not grand visions of a new world order. Don’t think Napoleon. Think bureaucratic flow charts.

The Bush Administration heavyweights haven’t even begun to fathom what this moment means for the President and for the country. In their calm, patient way, they think it is too soon to decide what they will do next and what realities they now face.

And yet one senses the cultural and political earth is moving. This was the biggest US military effort since Vietnam. Peoples’ mental categories are going to change. Four fifths of Americans now say they support the war, and only 15 per cent oppose it. To most Americans, supporting regime change in Iraq seems like the progressive and optimistic course. The people who oppose it look conservative and reactionary. The soldiers now appear as the picture of youthful idealism — risking their lives to liberate a people. The peace marchers who burned pictures of Bush and Blair seem motivated by their prejudices. The military seems relatively open and honest. In other words, you can take every Vietnam-era cliché and turn it on its head. That’s what this war means.

Eventually the Bush people will try to take advantage of this fact. But for now, the Republican Party is thoroughly dull — completely united behind the President.

Walter Bagehot wrote that the best government is dull. The Bush Administration is dull, even today, its best day.

The author is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard

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