An offhand comment by a top aide to Canada's prime minister, quoted as referring to U.S. President George W. Bush as "a moron," may have a lasting effect on relations between Ottawa and Washington.

Worse yet, revealing such a closely guarded US State secret has sent shockwaves through the Bush administration. This was one of those 'facts' that no one dared speak its name. Now it's 'out there' and it's only a matter of time, and mistakes, before everyone realizes that the 'moron' factor is a deeper part of the Bush administration than anyone previously thought.

The moron factor is so embedded in the GOP that it's become second nature, just ask Pat Buchanan. It's so embedded that no one really even noticed how widespread it was or how long it’s been part of everyday presidential operations. It goes back way before Nixon, who gave 'moron' a special criminal meaning. Gerald Ford gave being a 'moron' a heretofore untried, bumbling flavor like Chief Wiggam's son Ralph on the TV show 'The Simpsons'. Carter, seeing the value in the moronic, was the first Democrat to try and live the 'moronic' code exemplified by the cartoon 'Deputy Dawg'. Reagan and his crew built moronic into everything they did, epitomized by Ollie North, but with a 'folksy, down home' flavor. Bush 1, had a thousand points of moron-isy. Clinton tried to re-invent moronic-ness as a solely Democratic attribute involving moronic indiscretions with many different women, giving 'moron' its first sexual overtones. But Bush 2 grabbed it back with a vengeance by stealing the 2000 election, using strategically placed fractured non-sensical misstatements, and establishing the hallmark of moronic-tude: a bumbling, stumbling, Terminator-style foreign policy.

Will Washington and Ottawa get past the 'moronic' and move back to defcon 1 - 'silly'? Only time will tell, but it's very difficult to move backward on the scale, revealed here for the first time:
    Defcon 1 - silly
    Defcon 2 - moronic
    Defcon 3 - just plain stupid
    Defcon 4 - idiotic
    Defcon 5 - crazy-ass stupid

It is a major leap moving from one level to the next. Now that it's been revealed that America is at DEFCON 2, it means momentum is building like a snowball rolling down a mountain. You might be able to slow it down, but eventually it'll pick up speed, get bigger and bigger, and you'll be at DEFCON 5. D5 was reached in the second terms of the Clinton and Reagan administrations and within the first term by the Ford, Carter and Bush 1 reigns.

Right now Canada (whose leaders are internationally considered moronic as a given) and the US are urging their leaders to quickly "do something smart" to take the heat off. Just about anything will do - a remark about the weather, how much they like British leader Tony Blair's suits, or even how much today's Russia resembles an early 'wild west' kind of America in a 'sad former world super power kind of way'. This much is known, however: the 'moron' secret is out there and stuffing it back into the black box of world leader 'intelligence' is like trying to put an elephant into a Volkswagen Beetle - funny to watch, but impossible to do.