In his diary this morning, David Frum lays out what is becoming a serious problem for the Bush White House: as difficulties in Iraq mount, President Bush doesn’t seem to have anything new to say about the situation:

Again and again during the Bush presidency — and yesterday most recently — the president will agree to give what is advertised in advance as a major speech. An important venue will be chosen. A crowd of thousands will be gathered. The networks will all be invited. And after these elaborate preparations, the president says … nothing that he has not said a hundred times before.

Recently I asked an administration official about the highly generalized, same old, same old quality of the president’s Iraq speeches. “I don’t think that’s fair,” the official responded. “It may be the sound bite you hear on TV, but I think if you read the speeches, he talks about more. He puts it in context.”

The official continued: “When things are not going well, you always hear that you have a communications problem. Sometimes you have a facts-on-the-ground problem.” That’s partly true; there is indeed a facts-on-the-ground problem. But you can have a facts-on-the-ground problem and a communications problem, as Frum writes: “Presidential speeches cannot seem disconnected from reality as it is perceived by a majority of the American public.”