This week's awkward story: Is the Thane of Crawford imploding?

It's not like the pieces of this story haven't been floating at the corner of America's field of vision like a spectre since the summer, each new flickering appearance roughly coinciding with a new scandal, indictment, political reversal, or dip in the polls for the GOP.

It wasn't long ago that such ill omens would be followed quickly and surely by a terror alert or the announcement of a captured al Qaida lieutenant.

But the pieces are starting to dance squarely through our field of vision now: Increasingly hard-to-dismiss accounts are depicting Bush as drinking again, as sulking, withdrawn, nurturing feelings of betrayal, talking only to the cluster of strong women he's always kept around him. From Americablog:

So basically Bush is melting down. (Or, at the very least, the number one propaganda organ of the GOP wants us to think Bush is losing it - that's just bizarre on its face, and shows had bad things are for Bush, and the party.) This is rather disturbing in view of the increased chatter about Bush, an alcoholic who never sought treatment, now reportedly drinking again.

This man is running our country. And he won't speak to anyone - ANYONE - other than Condi Rice, his mom, and Karen Hughes? That leaves out the entire Dept of Defense - kind of important during war time - the CIA, every other agency and the entire White House staff.

It honestly sounds like he's losing control.

And he's in charge of our country.

Not just worst president ever. But quickly becoming scariest president ever.

(A correspondent writes: Why isn't Harriet Miers named as one of the women Bush is turning to, along with Condi Rice, Karen Hughes, his wife, and his mother?

Interesting question. Not enough power [gotta be a player to be a Bush woman], perhaps? Lingering, uncomfortable silence following being forced to pull out of the SCOTUS thing, maybe? Too busy running the ethics classes to spend hours on weepy late-night phone calls with the POTUS, you suppose?)

Of course, you have to figure in the credibility of the source--in the case of the drinking rumors, that's the National Enquirer. In the ecosystem of tabloids, as Steve Gilliard argues, they can't be dismissed too easily because they win a lot more lawsuits--although they have to, because they are more "newsy" and "public figure" oriented, and less interested in Elvis sightings and the Bat Boy. Galliard includes most of the Enquirer article in his post, and you can find the art here.

And at Crooks & Liars, they've got a compilation somebody made of Bush's campaign appearances last week where he looks . . . well, watch for yourself and decide.

Is the dry-drunk president back on the bottle? My bet? Better than even money.

And the source of the story about Bush becoming increasingly depressed and withdrawn is the uber-right wing Washington Times, giving it the added credibility of reluctant testimony. The Drudge Report added the bit about Bush's women.

Jeff at Preemptive Karma toys with the possibility that this is actually Karl Rove's most fiendishly brilliant plan yet:

This much is all obvious. But what if...?

One day, the news media explodes: "W gravely ill -- rushed to the hospital -- heart attack? stroke? will he live? will he die? The nation, the WORLD, waits and watches in anticipation...! More live coverage from the President's bedside vigil, after this word from Merck Pharmaceuticals..."

You think the Reagan death watch, then the papal circus, was something? Imagine the Days of Our Bush Lives soap opera insanity that would ensue. Multiply by 10 all the feeding-frenzy coverage of the Runaway Bride, Natalee Holloway, Terri Schiavo, Katrina & other hurricanes, looting, 9/11, Iraq, SCOTUS, Karl Rove -- hold it.

Karl, is that you feeding the rumor mill?

There's frequent commentary in Blogworld about the BushCo. desperation in the face of falling approval ratings, and it's usually expressed with the "wonder what they might do NEXT?" fear of something dreadful. But if the WH wanted to change the subject, dominate the news media discourse for awhile -- this would certainly do the trick.

I've never been a big believer in the whole Rove-is-a-genius thing. I think Lance Mannion has it pretty much right:

I don't doubt that Rove is smart. Very smart.

But is he that smart?

From all I've seen over the last 6 years, Rove's "genius" consists of a pair of twinned insights

That there are people who admire winning so much they will forgive the winner just about anything, and among them are a good number of journalists and many of your political opponents.

And that there are a great number of people so blinded by party loyalty, or naive patriotism, so trusting so convinced that their leaders' hearts must be in the right place, that they can't bring themselves to believe that the President of the United States would employ somebody as dirty as Karl Rove.

So even if Jeff isn't stretching to make a point (and I imagine he is), that scenario is too far out there for me.

Part of what we might be seeing here is old established feature of the MSM-tabloid symbiosis: If there's a scandalous story that journalists all "know" is out there, the "legit" press may simply wait for the tabs to bring it out first, so they can then report it themselves--not the scandal itself, not directly at least (because that would be beneath them), but on the fact that the tabloids are covering it, which is a more dignified angle (but still lets them write about the juicy story, and in the bargain saves them from worrying about whether any of the central story is true.) The pattern's not hard to find in a list posted by Kevin Drum.

It happened a lot during the Clinton days. Ask Matt Drudge. Increasingly, some blogs are joining the tabs in this little dance nowadays. Ask Dan Rather.

So here's something to watch for: The moment when Newsweek or ABC News starts covering the fact that the blogs and the tabs are all talking about Bush's apparent downward spiral. Sometime after that point, we can assume, they may begin reporting on the actual question of whether or not he is imploding. (And sometime after that, of course, on the question of whether that might be a bad thing for the country and the planet. Expect this headline: Bush Bringing Invisible Rabbit "Advisor" to Daily Security Briefings: Observers Disagree on Significance.)

But there's no denying it: The thought of a drunken Bush alone, at 3am, talking to the portrait of George Washington--although actually it's James Monroe; Bush never could tell "the wig guys" one from another--is pretty disheartening.

Reminds me, sort of, of the (in)famous "Saturday Night Live" sketch parodying an incident from Woodward's The Final Days, in which Nixon is talking to the portraits of the presidents, on the eve of his own resignation. Doing his astonishingly creepy impression of Nixon, Aykroyd looks up at Lincoln's portrait and growls, self-pityingly, "Well Abe, you were lucky--they shot you." (According to one SNL history I read, Franken and Davis were on acid when they wrote that sketch. Al's senatorial campaign in 2008 should be interesting. But I digress.)

So is this where we are--the poll numbers, the political reversals, the indictments, all hovering in front of Bush like Banquo's ghost, tormenting him for sins past? And Bush, like a liquored-up Macbeth, locked in discourse with his own private tormentors, a conversation which outsiders can only watch with increasing alarm?

Well, at least the good news is that that story turned out all right in the end. Not like the stage at the end of Act V was littered with more bodies than "Reservoir Dogs"--plus the collapse of a government and the end of a political dynasty--or anything like that.