The New York Times answers one of my questions about the president bailing on Annapolis:
In fact, Mr. Bush and his aides still deplore what they view as President Clinton’s disastrously hands-on involvement in the peace process in 2000. And they insist that Mr. Bush does not intend to negotiate personally the two-state peace he has pronounced as his vision....
Shorter: President Bush is no President Clinton. If Clinton failed, they seem to be reasoning, then Bush will definitely fail.
“The United States cannot impose our vision,” Mr. Bush told the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in the Oval Office on Monday, before saying, and sounding, again, Clintonesque, “but we can help facilitate.”
Holy hell. I actually agree with the president. It's fucked up, however, that this President Bush doesn't agree with the other President Bush who has rained down his vision all over Iraq for six years now.