Oh, you thought that now that the election’s over, you can forget all about all that crazy stuff we talked about for months on end? Well, good news, then: your President does, too:

President Bush said the public’s decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

“We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections,” Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. “The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me.”

With the Iraq elections two weeks away and no signs of the deadly insurgency abating, Bush set no timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops and twice declined to endorse Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s recent statement that the number of Americans serving in Iraq could be reduced by year’s end. Bush said he will not ask Congress to expand the size of the National Guard or regular Army, as some lawmakers and military experts have proposed.

…Last week, Powell said U.S. troop levels could be reduced this year, but Bush said it is premature to judge how many U.S. men and women will be needed to defeat the insurgency and plant a new and sustainable government. He also declined to pledge to significantly reduce U.S. troop levels before the end of his second term in January 2009.

…Bush acknowledged that the United States’ standing has diminished in some parts of the world and said he has asked Condoleezza Rice, his nominee to replace Powell at the State Department, to embark on a public diplomacy campaign that “explains our motives and explains our intentions.”

Bush acknowledged that “some of the decisions I’ve made up to now have affected our standing in parts of the world,” but predicted that most Muslims will eventually see America as a beacon of freedom and democracy.

“An accountability moment”?

I can’t believe that I actually read that. No, more — I can’t believe that a man who sits in the highest office in this country would be flippant enough to say that out loud, in public and unironically. “An accountability moment”!? As if re-electing the President not only validated his policies but absolved both he and his administration from responsibility for any mistakes or misjudgments? A reverse-Presidential pardon?

Here’s a transcript of the interview itself (WaPo registration probably required, I was already signed in so I don’t know for sure.) Read it. This isn’t a case where his answers were taken out of context — the question was put to him directly, why hasn’t anyone been held accountable for mistakes in prewar planning and postwar operations? Because of “an accountability moment.” Unambiguous, flat out, unironic and direct. Because America voted for me.

I’m not so blind–left that I think President Bush is really Dr. Evil in disguise, but this refusal to acknowledge 1) that mistakes or misjudgments in pre- and post-war planning exist (such as, ferinstance, that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq) and 2) that the 2004 election wasn’t a yea-or-nay vote on his policies but a choice between two deeply flawed candidates in an unstable wartime environment, is deeply, deeply troubling. (Never mind my quibbles with the rest of his comments, in which he reveals that the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which he trumpeted throughout the campaign and used like a bludgeon against his wishy-washy opponent, is dead and has no support from the White House — a ghost, a campaign tactic that was all about pandering to the right and scaring the center, IMHO.) Call it just extraordinary confidence in his own choices if you must (and some no doubt have and will), but it strikes me as overconfidence, bordering on unthinking arrogance. And that, to me, spells trouble in the next four years — because if nobody’s worth holding accountable for what’s happened to date, who is? Where’s the line? Where does the buck stop?

Because I don’t think it’s in this White House.