n Tuesday, The New York Times corrected a front page story from September 11, 2014, in which the Times falsely claimed that George W. Bush had not sought international alliances during the war in Iraq. Here's the correction:

An article on Sept. 11 about President Obama's speech to the nation describing his plans for a military campaign against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, gave an incorrect comparison between efforts by the president to seek allies' support for his plans and President George W. Bush's efforts on such backing for the Iraq war. The approach Mr. Obama is taking is similar to the one Mr. Bush took; it is not the case that, "Unlike Mr. Bush in the Iraq war, Mr. Obama has sought to surround the United States with partners."

It only took the Times two weeks to correct this basic factual error. But the error has a point: to differentiate good, wise, holy and just Obama from evil supervillain George W. Bush. The New York Times is simply fulfilling Obama's central life function: not being George W. Bush.

In point of fact, Barack Obama had a total of nine allies in his battle against ISIS as of September 5. George W. Bush's original "coalition of the willing" had 48 countries as members.