Without so much as a tip of the cap to Bill Safire

Frank Rich's latest wholly-predictable op-ed did deliver one pretty good line about President Bush: "Now that his disapproval rating has reached the Nixon nadir of negativity, even a joyous familial ritual isn’t enough to make the country glad to see him."

Pretty good, that is, until you re-read the original Safire line that he's playing off of, as delivered by Spiro Agnew: "In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club -- the "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history." Now that's some alliteratin'.