Maureen Dowd Believes Pat Robertson

In today's NYT, columnist Maureen Dowd shows a Strange New Respect for the veracity of televangelist Pat Robertson:

"When Paula Zahn asked the televangelist Tuesday whether Mr. Bush, as a Christian, should admit his mistakes, Mr. Robertson said he'd warned a self-satisfied Bush about Iraq: 'The Lord told me it was going to be (a) a disaster, and (b) messy.'

"Mr. Robertson said, 'He was the most self-assured man I ever met.' Paraphrasing Mark Twain, he said Mr. Bush was 'like a contented Christian with four aces. He was just sitting there, like, I'm on top of the world, and I warned him about this war. ... And I was trying to say, Mr. President, you better prepare the American people for casualties. "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."'

"W., it seems, really believes he's the one. President Neo. (And his advisers are disciples. That's why Condi Rice so willingly puts aside her national security duties to spread the Bush gospel in swing states, and why Karen Hughes raced to impugn Mr. Robertson's veracity after he described his chilling encounter with W.)"

The conversation sounds as plausible and rigorously documented as many of Robertson's other notoriously bizarre off-the-cuff remarks, but Dowd relates the story as if it were Gospel. We shall eagerly await her endorsements of Robertson's tales of miraculous healings, donations provided by the Lord when Robertson's ministry was in financial straits, and the amazing ability of prayer to control hurricanes.