For 31 years, Garrison Keillor’s weekly radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, has been reaching audiences across America.  Initially, the show’s sole objective was to present an episode of nostalgia for the old time, simple life of yesteryear.  Today, the show still accomplished much of this, but there are a number of new elements associated with it that come up—like politics, for instance.

Mr. Keillor’s show was inspired by a visit he made to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.  His immediate goal was to write an article on it for the New Yorker.  Keillor was so impressed with the Opry that he began to dream of creating a similar radio show for broadcast out of his home State, Minnesota.

More than three years ago, George Bush unleashed the dogs of war on Iraq, perhaps hoping that he would take his place among the "great" war presidents. It's strange how these guys imagine themselves written about in history books in the manner of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR, rather than Truman, Johnson, and Nixon. It's been more than 50 years since war immortalized a president, and yet they keep trying.

The dogs of war didn't build freedom and democracy in Iraq, or bring justice or peace. Rather, they came right back and ravaged the Republican Party in the election of 2006. This election has probably sealed Bush's place in history as a failed war president who used a period of national anxiety about terrorism for his own personal aggrandizement and the enrichment of his coterie.

That wasn't part of the plan.