SYDNEY, Australia - President Bush had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day at the Sydney Opera House.

He'd only reached the third sentence of Friday's speech to business leaders, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, when he committed his first gaffe. "Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit," Bush said to Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Oops. That would be APEC, the annual meeting of leaders from 21 Pacific Rim nations, not OPEC, the cartel of 12 major oil producers. Bush quickly corrected himself. "APEC summit," he said forcefully, joking that Howard had invited him to the OPEC summit next year (for the record, an impossibility, since neither Australia nor the U.S. are OPEC members).

The president's next goof went uncorrected — by him anyway. Talking about Howard's visit to Iraq last year to thank his country's soldiers serving there, Bush called them "Austrian troops." That one was fixed for him. Though tapes of the speech clearly show Bush saying "Austrian," the official text released by the White House switched it to "Australian."

Then, speech done, Bush confidently headed out — the wrong way. He strode away from the lectern on a path that would have sent him over a steep drop. Howard and others redirected the president to center stage, where there were steps leading down to the floor of the theater.

The event had inauspicious beginnings. Bush started 10 minutes late, so that APEC workers could hustle people out of the theater's balcony seating to fill the many empty portions of the main orchestra section below — which is most visible on camera. Even resettled, the audience remained quiet throughout the president's remarks, applauding only when he was finished.

A logistical glitch added to the woes. APEC security workers would not allow the members of the media who travel in Bush's motorcade to enter the Opera House along with him. This even though the journalists allowed into the president's entourage are extensively screened and guarded by the Secret Service, which has more stringent security standards than about any operation in the world. And even though they always accompany him into public events. As a result, while Bush spoke, the traveling media cooled its heels outside the landmark Opera House, shooting pictures and watching boats in the harbor.

I'm not President Bush's biggest fan, but I think he's just plain emotionally and physically exhausted and burned out. The guy can't escape anywhere without being constantly hounded.

Of course it is kind of fun for me to watch the Democrats fighting each other and being obviously disappointed that things may be going a bit better in Iraq (as it would seem). Al Gore has failed to be able to sustain the propaganda about global warming...a ploy which I think the Democrats tried to use to hang their hat on in the coming election as an issue, but has gotten very limited traction. Gore turned out to be his own worst enemy in trying to beat the drum on the subject. He was found to be consuming 40% more electricity in Tennessee than the average Tennessee resident, and now there is the video that someone took of him boarding a jet fuel hogging Gulfstream after he said that he would only use commercial airliners. You have Patrick Kennedy yelling and screaming about the Republicans being non-ecoconscious, yet the Kennedys of Hyannisport have spent millions in attorneys fees fighting the erection (oops...why don't I say "building") of wind generators in their neck of the woods.

Just as Gov. Dukakis said several weeks ago, the Democrats attempt to recapture the White House is not going to be the cakewalk they had anticipated and hoped it to be. Just as we were talking the other night, even mainstream Democrats have grown very weary of the superhyperbole of the left wingers in the party.

The American people are beginning to figure out and spit on the hypocritical nature of the whacked out right wing whacko Bible thumping Jesus freaks, as they have figured out the hypocritical nature of the the left wing whacko Kumbaya singing Cindy Sheehan adoring unwashed masses.

Am I opinionated?