Looks Like We May Be About to Find Out ...

... whether Barack Obama is as good at this president stuff as George W. Bush was.

In 2008, Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili ordered his troops to invade South Ossetia, where they promptly got their asses handed to them by the Russians. It was a pretty tense time, but Bush handled it masterfully, having his various minions make conflicting statements that pretty much added up to nothing. Even with his own party's senile, crabby old Uncle John and his  assistant (the one who could see Russia from her house) trying to raise the war flag as an election issue, he managed to defuse things and avoid sub-optimum outcomes like, oh, global nuclear holocaust and stuff.

So: Does Obama have the right stuff -- the political/diplomatic chops to let himself be walked back off the ledge he's ever so gingerly been tip-toeing out onto (with McCain and Palin once again behind him, pushing for all they're worth)?

I guess we'll see. Might want to practice the ol' "duck and cover" routine just in case.