Here's a (now-extinct) SAT analogy for you...

President Bush's open and public support of Fatah in the recent Palestinian elections is to Foreign Policy as _______________ is to Business.

I'm going to go with "the Edsel," though I would also accept "New Coke."

Honestly, though, has there been any more unambiguously bad diplomatic move over the past five years? Even the Iraq War has had its share of silver lining and elicited honest differences of opinion. But any first-grader could have predicted that when a man as, um, contraversial to the Palestinians as George Bush unapologetically meddles in their election and all but dares them to vote for Hamas... well, they're going to give them a majority to spite the bastard.

I doubt a Hamas government will be a conclusive disaster for the U.S., Isreal, or the peace process as a whole. Governing itself and the specter of reelection often moderate ideologues. But this is hardly the point. The Bush Administration sensibly saw Fatah as the better alternative... then undermined their own interests by shoving their already well-established support for Fatah in voters' faces. Americans in Ohio were infuriated when a British newspaper in 2004 cold-called voters in support of Kerry. Why should we assume democrats, even nascent democrats, in other countries would feel differently?