Readers of New York’s upmarket Vanity Fair were more than a little surprised at this month’s editorial which vehemently castigated George W Bush, claiming the president has made such a botch of things “there is no haven anywhere, even the Candians hate him.” Penned by the usually mild mannered editor of the magazine, Gradon Carter, he likened the president to a man with a few feet of toilet paper stuck to the heel of his shoe: he can’t seem to get away from the myriad of scandals at home.

Carter is scathing about Bush’s administration, charging it with plunging the country into two wars without end, of taking the budget surplus of hundreds of billions of dollars and turning it into deficit in the hundreds of billions. He says the adminstration bullies enemies and friends alike and has shredded Medicare, civil liberties, poverty programmes and 30 years worth of environmental protection.

New York might be a Democrats town, and Hillary is queen but the January issue of VF doesn’t pull any punches and signals a dirty fight for the presidentail nominations when they come up. The spotlight will be on the Murdoch New York Post who wont let the expatriate Australian’s favourite American politician be subjected to such scrutiny. As they say; fasten your seat belts kids, it could be a rough crossing.