| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"A Veteran" |
| Date: |
15 May 2007 10:44:48 PM |
| Object: |
What, me worry? |
Republicans Unnerved by Paralyzed Presidency
By Albert R. Hunt
Bloomberg
Monday 14 May 2007
There's a number that chills Republicans: 616. That's how many
days remain in the Bush administration.
Private conversations with Republicans throughout America reveal
doom and gloom about a politically paralyzed presidency and party. The
on-the-record observations are almost as bleak.
"There's a lot of nervousness up here," says U.S. Representative
Ray LaHood of Illinois. "It's a very difficult time for Republicans."
LaHood was one of 11 House Republicans who met with President George W.
Bush this past week to tell him the party was in political peril.
"Unfortunately, the big issues will not be dealt with between
now and the next election," says Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina.
"The country doesn't believe George W. Bush, it doesn't trust
him, and with 19 months to go it's only going to get worse," predicts Ed
Rollins, a Republican strategist who ran Ronald Reagan's 1984
presidential campaign. "There is nothing the president can do to get his
(poll) numbers back up."
According to those polls, almost two-thirds of Americans
disapprove of Bush's job performance; that is Richard Nixon territory. A
majority of the public approved of the performance of the last two
lame-duck presidents, Reagan and Bill Clinton, at this same stage in
their administrations.
Daily Embarrassments
While the other major democracies have, or are about to have,
new leaders, America is mired in a rudderless status quo. A new
embarrassment or scandal - Alberto Gonzales, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove -
seems to surface daily; the only good news for the White House is that
occasionally these stories overshadow the bad news coming out of Iraq.
Bush is reviled around much of the world, has precious little
political capital at home, and seems surrounded by hacks or the
forgettable and faceless.
Strikingly, perhaps the two most important members of the
Cabinet - Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson - have little history with the president, and their greatest
leverage is the havoc that would be wrought if they left.
For a year and a half, there have been various rationalizations
for Bush's second-term presidential problems, and guarantees that a
solution is at hand.
Josh Bolten, who replaced Andy Card as chief of staff, was
supposed to refocus the administration; after Rove escaped the shadow of
a special prosecutor, he and the president were going to be
re-energized; when Don Rumsfeld, the face of the Iraq debacle, was
fired, there was supposed to be a new start.
No More Fixes
Now, the dwindling band of Bush supporters have run out of fixes
and are resigned to the contemporary assessments. Like Harry Truman, the
patron saint of unpopular American politicians, Bush will be vindicated
by history, they say.
An analogy to President Lyndon Johnson seems more apt, although
with an exception: LBJ became a lame duck with less than 10 months to go
in his term; Bush, the 43rd president, has almost twice as long to go.
This has enormous implications for foreign policy, domestic
politics and the legislative agenda for the next year and a half.
Bill Cohen, a Republican who served as defense secretary under
Clinton, thinks Bush blew what may have been his last opportunity by
failing to embrace the bipartisan recommendations by the Jim Baker-Lee
Hamilton-led Iraq Study Group to gradually disengage from Iraq.
Cohen, who travels the globe advising clients, says the
president "doesn't have much influence on anything," commanding little
respect or fear around the world.
Dominant No More
That's why the notion that he may take military action against
Iran - for good or bad reasons - is far-fetched. The American military,
bogged down in Iraq, lacks the resources and the president lacks the
credibility for such a huge step.
Politically, there is a telling indicator: Count the number of
times any Republican presidential candidate cites Bush in speeches,
debates or interviews. You will need only one hand, if that.
Recall a few years ago how this president was the dominant
figure in his party.
According to last month's Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times national
survey, Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin want the next president to move
away from Bush's policies.
Evaporated Dreams
While the president can veto most initiatives of congressional
Democrats, his once-ambitious second-term dreams of overhauling Social
Security and the tax system and dealing with America's health-care
crisis have evaporated.
The Bush administration will probably get a few relatively small
trade deals on the Democrats' terms. These are desirable, though not
exactly the stuff of legacies.
What is possible, if more challenging, is a deal on a
medium-size energy-global warming package. The president would have to
resolve major tensions within his own administration, with Paulson and
Vice President ***** Cheney as the most likely adversaries. That's a
skill that has eluded him in the past.
And it's his own party that stands in the way of an important
achievement on reform of immigration, an area where the president has
consistently been enlightened.
Congressional Democrats will pass an immigration bill if -and
this is a big if - at last a third of Republican lawmakers support
liberalized measures.
The risk is that this issue inflames the party's conservatives,
who form the nucleus of Bush's dwindling support. The president may
already be making too many concessions to the hardliners - one White
House proposal would make it harder for illegal immigrants to become
citizens - to produce a bipartisan immigration breakthrough.
Accordingly, Bush will probably spend much of the next year and
a half sparring with critics, including a growing number in his own
party, over an Iraq war policy that few believe will succeed.
A year ago, William F. Buckley Jr., the father of contemporary
American conservatism, lamented that even if Bush had "invented the Bill
of Rights, it wouldn't get him out of his (Iraq) jam."
That won't change over the next 616 days.
--------
Albert R. Hunt is the executive editor for Washington at
Bloomberg News.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051507P.shtml
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