That the president’s policies in the Middle East have undermined the country’s standing and stature around the world is hardly controversial, but McClatchy’s Warren Strobel and Nancy Youssef explain a frequently-overlooked complication: by focusing its diplomatic efforts on one region, the administration is starting to neglect other regions.

Two months ago, President Bush enthusiastically accepted an invitation to visit Singapore in September. But he abruptly changed plans, and his summit with Southeast Asian leaders is off. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is skipping an Asian meeting, too, and tossed out plans to visit Africa this week. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ mission to Latin America? Postponed.

The reason is Iraq.

As the White House struggles to show progress in the 52-month-old war, other important global issues increasingly are getting pushed to the side, according to U.S. officials, diplomats and analysts.

“The United States is very focused on Iraq and the Middle East. We know we are not a white-heat zone … which is good for us. But it means we are not on top of the list,” said Heng Chee Chan, Singapore’s ambassador to the United States.

Walter Lohman, who covers Asian affairs for the conservative Heritage Foundation, noted, “Canceling a meeting here or there may not seem like a big deal, but the slights are piling up.” He added, “Unless the Bush administration can quickly get back on track, the game is over; it will fall to the next president to revitalize the U.S. commitment” to Asia.

And Latin America. And Africa.

Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said outside of Europe, where Bush has made some efforts at engagement, “things don’t look as good,” particularly in countries experiencing far-reaching changes stemming from China’s rise. Kupchan added, “There doesn’t seem to be anybody who’s minding the store at the top level.”

If I only had a nickel for every time I’ve seen that line applied to the White House over the last several years….

The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes on the declassified National Intelligence Estimate:

“I think one of the things we saw this week, and this, this speaks directly to what the vice president told me, is with this — the release of this NIE we saw a shift in thinking. I think for a long time administration critics had begun to make the argument that really this al-Qaeda threat is overblown, that they misled us into the war in Iraq, they’re misleading us about the seriousness of the threat from al-Qaeda. And I think what the NIE does, even though in some ways it’s, it’s very critical of the administration, is it strengthens the basic case that the administration has been making that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat.”

I have no idea what Hayes is talking about. Or, more precisely, Hayes has no idea what he’s talking about.

Where are these mysterious White House “critics” who’ve been arguing that the al Qaeda threat is “overblown”? Seriously, name some prominent Bush detractors who have argued this, in Hayes’ words, “for a long time.” I’m relatively clued into Democratic talking points and I can’t recall any Democrat or left-leaning political figure ever making this argument in any forum, in any context. Hayes appears to have simply made it up in the hopes of making the NIE appear more favorable for his White House allies.

Which segues to the other problem: the NIE doesn’t strengthen the Bush’s gang’s “basic case” at all. The White House has said, repeatedly, that thanks to the president’s leadership, we’ve destroyed al Qaeda’s leadership and have the terrorist network on the run. The NIE, in stark contrast, shows the opposite and vindicates what White House critics have been arguing for years. While the president’s policies have been failing in Iraq, al Qaeda is rebuilding, recruiting, and refilling its coffers — in large part because of the president’s failed policies in Iraq.

And yet there was Hayes, on national television, making an argument that was clearly false, predicated on straw men and imaginary progress.

The mind reels.

“You know what? Lighten up slightly,” Mitt Romney says to a critic of the “Obama-Osama” sign flap. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Morning Roundup.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) announced on Meet the Press on Sunday that he would soon be introducing a censure resolution against the President of the United States. We take a look at how strong a case he’s got, with a little help from the other Sunday morning talk shows, in today’s Sunday Show Roundup episode of TPMtv …

Meet the former Guantanamo Bay insider who legal observers say is responsible for the Supreme Court taking up the question of detainees’ habeas rights.

Hillary’s war with the Pentagon continues.

The latest: She’s just joined forces with Senators Webb, Bayh and Byrd, calling in a letter for Senate Armed Services Committee hearings to force the Department of Defense to share its contingency Iraq withdrawal plans with Congress.

We’ve got a copy of Hillary and Webb’s letter to Armed Services chair Carl Levin — check it out.

We’ve reporting for a while on Hans von Spakovsky, one of the key bamboozlers at the Bush civil rights division, who worked with Bradley Schlozman on getting the voting section to finally start cracking down on all the vote scams perpetrated by black people. Anyway, von Spakovsky is now up for confirmation for a position as an FEC commissioner, where he’s sure not to do any harm. But now it seems that in his confirmation testimony he may have fibbed about his role in purging people who believe in voting rights from the voting rights section.

Also note: Paul Kiel’s stories on the Civil Rights Division usually get snapped up and recycled without credit by certain reporters who shall remain nameless. So read it now before it’s no longer Paul’s story.

Gonzales: I destroyed DOJ’s reputation. So who better than me to fix it?

Novak: Plame wasn’t covert and I’d out her again if I had the chance.

Here’s one thing I’m curious about. Steven Hayes’ new Cheney book seems to be getting a decent amount of criticism. But why is it exactly that anyone thinks it’s an example of some sort of warrior’s ethic or hardcore-osity that the vice president appears to suffer from a fairly extreme if not precisely clinical sort of paranoia? Or frightened of various wildly improbable fantasies.

One of the things a leader must have is the power of discrimination and judgment. There are literally limitless numbers of conceivable threats to consider. Some are very real and dangerous while others are merely notional. And a person in a position of authority really needs to be able to discriminate between the two. But if we accept what’s written about Cheney in these insider-access accounts, he seems to lack any such capability.

Meanwhile, what his supporters want us to see as a kind of inspired vigilance looks a lot more like at least the threshold of clinical paranoia.

His supporters want us to believe that only Cheney has the guts and gumption perseverate on these fears while the rest of us are lulled into a calm of our own inner frivolity. But setting aside the misdirection, straw men and general bamboozlement, even the praise of Cheney’s acolytes and footmen strikes me as quite damning.